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"We now own all our own intellectual property and therefore no longer have to pay licensing fees and future development of the technology is in our hands," said Maurice Chadwick, chief operations officer with Buytel.
He said the company acquired the "SpeakerKey" core technology from US-based ITT Industries for "a significant seven figure sum."
SpeakKey is part of the software that underlies Buytel's voice verification service and to date the company had exclusively licensed the technology from ITT.
Chadwick described the licensing deal that was on a per usage basis as "relatively expensive" for the company.
As part of the deal, Buytel is also in negotiations to hire five experienced staff members that are currently working for ITT on the SpeakerKey technology.
Buytel said the SpeakerKey technology has a history stretching back to military research in the US in 1981.
It is an integral part of Buytel's Voicevault service that verifies people by their voice over the telephone and Internet in less than half a second.
The company said the technology distinguishes the unique characteristics of an individual's voice to a degree of accuracy greater than 99 percent.
Through its subsidiary Trust 5, Buytel is also negotiating a multi-million pound deal with leading mobile operators in Ireland, South Africa and the UK for a mobile phone top up product using voice verification.
The service would allow mobile phone users to top up their credit via their mobile phone without going to an ATM machine or newsagent.
Users will receive an SMS from the network operator when their credit is running low to ask them whether they would like to top up. The user could then top up by verifying it with their voice and the payment would be debited automatically from the person's bank account or credit card.
Chadwick said the market for such a product was massive.
Buytel recently raised a second round of funding of EUR15 million led by Accenture Technology Ventures with WestLB acting as co-investors.
Chadwick said the rest of the funding would be used to support the company's worldwide sales drive.
The company employs 70 people, including 50 in Ireland.
Yankee Group forecast that biometrics would become a mainstream technology by late 2001.
Industry research predicts that the US market for voice verification products will reach USD2.6 billion by 2006.
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